


Reborn into more trouble

by Awolreel



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: But then its undone, Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 12:00:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14332029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Awolreel/pseuds/Awolreel
Summary: Gehrman died but now he isn't dead





	Reborn into more trouble

Green, green and white was all Gehrman could see. A warm breeze grazes across his face, pulling Gehrman back to thinking. All the First Hunter could remember was that young hunter, Vesper, had rejected being freed from this nightmare and the pair of them fought. Gehrman grimaced at the memory of the fight, the hunter has fought him tooth and nail, mostly used their Augur and Calls to counter his hits. But Gehrman, even with all his skill, made a mistake which Vesper, like any hunter worth their salt, made the killing blow.

 

Gehrman pushes himself to his knees, being careful of his right, wooden leg. His hat was a little away from him, his Burial Blade was a little further away but still close by. He tries to shove the feelings of betrayal and hurt away, he didn’t know why Vesper would give up the chance to be free from this nightmare, they had looked so sure standing there as if they were still sane. The feelings were only made worse by how close him and Vesper had gotten during the Hunt, of the memories of gentle kissing and exploring touches.

 

A strange feeling seems to drown out the rest of them in him, something that demanded his attention. Once it came to Gehrman, he felt like a damn fool. Vesper had killed him, yet here he stands in the Hunter’s Dream once more. He quite remembers Vesper’s Call’s orbs tearing his body apart, so how is he back here? Perhaps  _ Mother _ brought him back? Would be like her to continue his personal hell. But that doesn’t really explain why he is here. If Vesper killed him, then the Great One from the Moon would have replaced Gehrman with Vesper. So, why bring Gehrman back?

 

A nagging horror creeps up on Gehrman, perhaps Vesper, not quite understanding, attacked the Great One and perished. And because the replacement is dead, all she could do is bring Gehrman back. He could only sigh as a light false breeze brush his face, freed at last only to be dragged back in. At least Vesper is free from the dreadful nightmare, even if they fought to the end.

 

Grabbing his hat and his Burial Blade, the First Hunter started the walk back to the workshop. This odd amount of energy he feels will leave in due time, the Great One from the Moon rarely gifts him energy to move about, she had given him energy to fight harder during his bout with Vesper but that’s only because Gehrman started to buckle from the strain of the fight.

 

As he starts to get close to the workshop, Gehrman notices that the Plain Doll is no longer standing where she had been when Vesper was running around during the Hunt. He came to a stop and looked about, hoping to see her around one of the graves. She wasn’t and she wasn’t sitting on the wall like she had been before Vesper came to the Dream.

 

But his answer was heard, “…perhaps it was merely you were flexing your power unconsciously but nothing seemed…” The Doll’s voice was devoid and cold as always, though slightly muffled by the fact that she was in the Workshop. Which was odd on its own, Doll doesn’t go into the Workshop unless she is called into it. Most likely viewing it as a space for Gehrman and the hunters.

 

He moves towards the Workshop, curious about why Doll is in there and who she is speaking to. The First Hunter really doubts that she is talking to the Great One from the Moon, but at this point, she is the only other being left in the Hunter’s Dream who the Doll could talk to. Once in the threshold of the Workshop, he could see the doll standing in the middle of the room, looking down at a table. Gehrman wasn’t trying to sneak up to the Doll, due to a long career of being a Hunter, the Doll didn’t notice his presence. A quick knock to the door frame causes the blank eyed Doll to turn to him and cautioned out “Gehrman?”

 

If he didn’t know the Plain Doll, he would have thought she was surprised to see him. Leaning against the door frame, he asks, “Doll, who are you talking to…?” Gehrman looked for a person or greater being that the Doll could have been talking to but there was only her and the thing behind her. The thing, right in the middle of the Workshop, was a makeshift cradle on a table. The cradle was made up of some of his blankets and, from what he could tell, a curtain with stones around it, keeping the shape. It all placed on the center of table and on top of it all sat…a squid?

 

The Plain Doll simply tilts her head and states, “I was speaking with Vesper.” An old heart clenches, guilt and shame start to bloom in the First Hunter’s stomach, the young Hunter’s name stung, and will for a long time before it turns to nothing. But the Doll’s words made no sense, Vesper had to be dead if he was here. They had to have fought the Great One from the Moon and lost, there is no way that she is that cruel to make him watch Vesper go down the same path he did. Not only that but Vesper wasn’t in the damn room!

 

Unless they were. Eyes dart back to the makeshift cradle and to the little squid on it. A few runes drifted into Gehrman’s mind with the sound of four different bells ring in his actual ears. The runes took the shape of his title, First Hunter. The only beings that can put runes into a human’s mind are the Great Ones. He whirled his head back to the Plain Doll, who was not bothered by the fact that Vesper is now a…baby Great One, and points at baby on the table. “What?! Are you trying to tell me that, THAT’S Vesper?!” Questions swirl in his mind, how did this happen, why did the Great One from the Moon do this, but he couldn’t see any answers to this madness.

 

The Doll stares straight at the First Hunter, and began to clarify, “Yes, Gehrman. After Vesper had fr…” but her words were soon drowning under an earsplitting howl that fills the room and the whole dream. The howl was a horrid mix of wolves’ cry, wet gurgling, and a dying infant’s sobs. Gehrman could feel the runes flashing in his head, but they were random and gone in an instant before new ones took their place. The four bells were chiming like mad in his ears and head which made it horrendous to even think. He whips his head to, to Vesper, and see the new Great One having a meltdown.

 

The little body shaking itself back and forth and the distressed cries only cause the guilt, dread, and shame inside of Gehrman to surge like a wave. The First Hunter knew why the new Great One was so scared, he knew that Vesper had found out about the Fishing Hamlet. That they knew about what he did under orders. While the dread and shame had almost fully consumed him, a new horrid emotion rooted itself in him. Despair.

 

Despair at the fact Vesper was afraid of him, despair at the fact that his sins have forever tainted him, and despair at the fact he is truly alone in this nightmare now.

 

Gehrman’s legs move without thought, moving him back out of the workshop and away from the sobbing Great One and the Doll trying to calm them. Her emotionless voice coos and shushes at the tiny, deafening sobs. He got as far as the gate to the flower field before his legs threaten to drop.

 

He grabs the moss covered stone wall, trying to steady himself as he slides down to the ground. Once there, he drags his hands over his weary face, trying his best to not let the devastating emotions overtake him. Gehrman knew that Vesper, when they were still a human, had found out about the Fishing Hamlet and what the First Hunter did there, they were understanding and tried to be someone that he could talk to about it. But now, they are a defenseless, inexperienced Great One and had everything to fear when it came to him.

 

The old Hunter’s nose draws in fast, deep breaths of the paradoxically warm cold air of the Dream, trying to not allow tears to form in his eyes. The runes, howls, and bell chimes have quieted down to nothing, leaving Gehrman to the deafening silence and his own shame and despair. Perhaps this is why Oedon, the Formless One, is so more comfortable dealing with humans than the rest of the Great Ones. No monster wearing a man’s skin can hurt you if you have no form. How long will it take Vesper to kill him again? The First Hunter knows that they will, no one sane would keep someone that can kill them so close, especially when that someone had already killed something like them before.

 

The false wind that carried no warmth or coolness brushes his face as he fails to compose himself. Hot tears roll down his weathered face, the old known feelings of hurting the ones he loves seethes in Gehrman’s chest. Small tugs to his coat break his attention, and he turns his head down to see…small black tentacles?

 

Correction, Gehrman sees Vesper, or at least, their new form, gripping his coat. Little black tentacles, smooth and almost slimy looking, like a frog’s skin. If he looked closely, he could see a small beak that also have a bit of the fabric of his coat being held by it. Once Vesper seen that he was looking at them, or however they knew that he was looking because the First Hunter sees no eyes on the little body, they let go of his coat and lays their head with the tentacles on his lap. Like how they did when they were human and Gehrman had a nightmare of the Hamlet.

 

But why would Vesper come out here? Why try and comfort him? Maybe to relax him before he dies once more? His left hand shakes with hesitation and anxiety before gently placing itself onto Vesper’s head. Even though their skin looked like it was coated in slime, Vesper’s skin was more like silk. Putting his hand on their head must have been what Vesper had wanted, for he could hear an almost purr and soft chiming from the little squid body. The little body was warm as a human’s, he isn’t sure why they would be warm-blooded but Gehrman isn’t a scholar on Great Ones.

 

Soft footsteps approach him and the baby Great One, and he hadn’t meant to, but Gehrman quickly shields Vesper with his arm. Not that they would need to be defended from the Plain Doll, who now stood a few feet from them. He relaxes and moves his hand back onto Vesper’s head. The Doll stood there for a moment before stating, “This wasn’t Vesper’s intention, Gehrman.” Well, he guessed that. What Great One would want to bring back the man who murdered a baby Great One? Though, the cuddling they were doing now made no sense to the First Hunter. The Doll continues with, “They had wished to free you from this Dream.” That sane look when they fought, as if they were so sure of staying in the Dream, made all the sense in the world to him with the information the Doll gave him. Vesper was like him, trying to free someone they care for from the Hunter’s Dream.

  
  


But that couldn’t be all the information the Doll had. As the baby Great One purred and chimed happily with head on his lap, Gehrman angles his head to the Doll and states, “But it doesn’t explain why they are like this or where  _ Mother _ is.” While normally he is quite happy to not deal with the moody Great One from the Moon, he is starting to get concern about her lack of appearing. Maybe this was a punishment for him? Forcing him to care for a baby Great One?

 

The Doll didn’t wait too long to give him the answer, “The way they are now isn’t their intention either, more of a result of moving in the dark.” Isn’t everyone moving around in the dark when it comes dealing with Great Ones? It took Gehrman years to figure out the runes that  _ Mother _ would throw at him, he wasn’t like Caryll, he could just look at a rune and somehow know what it is. “They somehow became to the same level as the gods and was able to take one’s place after killing them.” The Plain Doll’s words freeze Gehrman, Vesper had done it. Where else everyone else had failed, Laurence, Willem, even that loon Micolash had all failed to become something greater than what they were. But somehow a lost and confused foreigner became something greater than humanity.

 

The Plain Doll, thankfully, stopped him from his mind wondering how Vesper did it by simply stating, “Returning you here isn’t what they had wanted to do.” The Doll still stood a few feet from him, she has never truly felt the human need to move in place or twitch. No matter how life-like he had tried to make her, no matter how many echoes  _ Mother _ placed in her, the Plain Doll was and never will be human. Once that had bothered Gehrman, he had wanted something different and more from the Doll, but now it barely perturbed him.

 

The First Hunter could had guessed that Vesper didn’t mean to bring him back to life, but he didn’t know why he is still here. A grey-haired brow raises at the Doll and he inquired, “What do you mean by that?” The ache in Gehrman’s heart had lessened, but not gone. The bigger ache was coming from his ass from sitting on stone. But if he was to stand now, the baby Great One wouldn’t be able to rest their head on his lap.

 

Vesper, like how they were when they human, paid no attention to the Doll’s and his words as they spoke about them. All they did is rest their head on the First Hunter’s lap and kept purring at him. Gehrman strokes the silky skin of the baby Great One, he figured that Vesper held more feelings for him than was normal. Not that he would call his feelings for them normal, it was already odd for his feelings for Maria, who was once twenty years his junior. But Vesper must have been at least fifty years younger than him and that is without the time within the Dream coming into play. They must have had the same amount of feelings, people don’t miss someone so much they bring them back from the dead if they were just a casual affair.

 

The glass eyes of the Doll bore into him, but not with any emotions to the stare. Her porcelain-like face remained as detached as her eyes as she answers his question. “Vesper missed you dearly. And in their youthful use of power, they brought you back by missing you so much.” It wasn’t a totally strange idea that a Great One could bring back the dead, even with one being so young. “That is why they were so upset when you walked into the Workshop.” Understanding and a sense of relief washes over him, like a crashing wave. Vesper’s meltdown before wasn’t from fear of him, it was from learning that they took his freedom away from him once again.

 

Gehrman knows he should be angry at Vesper for bringing him back to life, he does feel a little exasperated about being alive again. But, how can he blame them? They were a baby again and one that has the power to remake the world if they could figure out how to do it. Not only that, but at least that Vesper brought him back out of missing him rather than cruelty.

 

Gently, Gehrman lifts Vesper into his arms and they allow it. All that power and they trust him. Trust him to not harm them while at their weakest, trust him with their very life. Small tentacles reach for his face, almost like a child reaching for a grandparent. Bringing them closer, because how could he not, their warm little limbs rubs themselves over his large nose. The tiny beak nestled within presses against the tip of his nose and pulls back with a small click. Warmth washes over the arches in his old heart; a soft, valuable laugh slips out his lips. The tears that rolled down his face was long gone, now replaced by little tentacles rubbing themselves over his face, trying to bring him comfort.

 

The relief of finding out that Vesper wasn’t deathly fearful of him wasn’t quite enough to dull the growing ache on Gehrman’s ass from sitting on the hard stone. He needs to find a proper chair for now, at least until he can find his wheelchair. Tucking little Vesper into his chest, and the old Hunter pushes himself up back onto his feet. While the tiny Great One purrs into his chest, Gehrman turns to the Doll and declares, “Let’s go inside and sit down somewhere that isn’t stone.” The Plain Doll simply curtsy and led Gehrman and Vesper back to the Workshop.


End file.
